The information includes legislative changes enacted through the end of the 1998 session of the North Carolina General Assembly. The introduction describes how a sentence is determined under structured sentencing, which applies to nearly all offenses committed on or after October 1, 1994. It also reviews the pertinent structured sentencing statutes, notes the major appellate court decisions interpreting them, and discusses other sentencing provisions such as restitution requirements that may affect a defendant's sentence. The punishment chart for criminal offenses includes crimes that appear most often on the criminal dockets of district and superior courts. The chart's first column lists the statutory reference for the offense, the second column presents a brief description of the offense, and the third column indicates the current class of the offense. The punishment chart for motor vehicle offenses includes the section number that creates each offense; indicates whether defendants must surrender their driver's licenses; describes each offense; gives the section number of the statute that contains the punishment; and indicates whether the punishment category is infraction, misdemeanor, or felony. Tables, footnotes, appended waiver list and point system for traffic violations, and indexes for each punishment chart